This papers session investigates the complexities of digital/simulated fieldwork and the interplay that emerges between individuals, groups, and system mechanics. Through ethnography we learn of emigrant Iranian computer scientists in the United States specializing in the “debiasing” of AI systems; Chinese Buddhist diaspora communities based in French Canada experiencing digital migration since the outset of COVID-19; U.S. researchers and educators utilizing virtual reality headsets for open-ended interviews and pedagogy; recruitment of virtual/automated followers in cult-building tabletop and video game play; and various Satanic conspiracy theorist communities united through social media. This session (which includes a respondent) provides profound phenomenological implications to our techno-virtual-being-in-the world, at times resisting the orderliness of algorithms and numbers with care and concern reserved for residual emotional states, finding authenticity in digitality, all the while further complicating the methodology of observing simulating worlds and actions as ethnography.
This paper examines the lives and work of a group of emigrant Iranian computer scientists in the US specializing in the “debiasing” of AI systems. Focusing on the concept of "bias," as entangled with both their professional and personal lives, I argue that amidst their debiasing efforts, the line between Islamic and anti-Islamic bias often becomes blurred. Through my ethnographic encounter, I explore the relationship between "bias" in the language of numbers and bias as felt by the subject. In the former, bias can supposedly be articulated, quantified, and mitigated. In the latter, bias manifests as an emotional residue, resistsing the orderliness of algorithms and numbers, with deep roots in a complex interplay of history, memory, and emotion. In exploring this terrain, I address the complexities within the concept of bias in relation to Islam at the intersection of AI and the broader liberal project of debiasing citizens at large.
In this article, I examine how I utilize a collection of "skillful means” informed by Buddhism, namely a collection of practices encompassing reflexive choices and decisions, positioning, and creativities that are situationally tailored for and derived from interacting with Chinese Buddhist diasporas in French Canada in the context of digital social media throughout my digital fieldwork. I use ethnographic vignettes to illustrate how these practices, afforded by the Buddhist ideas, digital possibilities, and ethnographic reflexivity, are crucial to constantly navigate, negotiate, and devise new strategies for pinpointing digital field sites and conducting participant observation. More importantly, I highlight the digital affordances one could leverage as both a researcher and a practitioner to actively build visibility and voices in the researched digital communities. I further reflect on how these dynamics can uniquely affect the researched individuals and communities. Finally, I point out the caveats and pitfalls this approach can bring.
While much phenomenological work has been undertaken concerning questions of techno-virtual-being-in-the world, very little ethnographic work has applied a Heideggerian hermeneutic to the question of virtual “solicitude,” or the type of “Dasein-with [that] remains existentially constitutive for Being-in-the-world [and] must be Interpreted in terms of the phenomenon of care; for as ‘care’ the Being of Dasein in general is to be defined” (Being and Time, 1927). The literature concerned with Heideggerian accounts of virtual inhabitation and video game play have either failed to recognize the constitutive nature of Being-with, a type of sociality, to Being-in-the-world or have foreclosed the possibility of fostering authentic social relationships within virtual worlds by virtue of virtual technology use itself. The present work seeks to rectify this prior dearth in the literature by countering these latter claims of socio-existential inauthenticity in technologically mediated virtual worlds by way of an existential ethnography of video game play.
This paper provides a comparative analysis of the board game CULTivate and the video game Cult of the Lamb. In it, I focus on their gameplay and mechanics (e.g., the actions a player may take) to decode how these games have implicit theories of what cults are and how cults work. It situates these games and their implicit theories within recent debates on the rhetoric of cults and their representation in popular media. This paper concludes with suggestions about research at the intersection of Religious Studies and Game Studies with a focus on the design and experience of game mechanics.
The Satanic Cult conspiracy theory alleges that Satan-worshipping cults exist and threaten society. It has underpinned multiple witch hunts and moral panics from the early Middle Ages to the 1980s ‘Satanic Panic’. Today its narratives have appeared again, popularised by seemingly united communities of conspiracy theorists across social media. This paper analyses the role of social media in legitimising contemporary Satanic cult conspiracy theories, and the relationship between its 'followers' and those that they demonise. It emphasises both how its theorists weaponise ‘Satanic cult’ accusations against others, but also – paradoxically - how they have themselves also attracted ‘the cult label’. This paper ultimately questions the extent to which we can determine whether online conspiracism today can be considered a form of ‘new religion’, or even ‘belief’ at all, and whether or not it really matters.